Financing future fertility: Women’s views on funding egg freezing

Abstract

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‘I feel that injustice is being done to me’: a qualitative study of women’s viewpoints on the (lack of) reimbursement for social egg freezing

“…Others saw SEF as a response to a medical problem or, at least, as a treatment based on medical advice. These findings confirm previous work that has pointed to considerable ambiguity in recognising a (medical) need for this intervention [ 15 , 54 , 55 ].…”

“…This study sheds light on how the current lack of reimbursement was perceived among women who wanted to initiate or had undergone at least one egg freezing cycle in Belgium. While women’s concerns regarding the costs of freezing have often been mentioned as a side note in empirical studies on women’s motivations to freeze their eggs [ 21 , 45 ], our study is one of the very few studies who investigated the topic in a systematic manner [ 15 ].…”

“…However, the recent revision of the French bioethics law has defied all predictions and decided to offer partial reimbursement of the clinical procedure costs of ‘non-medical’ egg freezing [ 14 ]. Johnston et al argued that the growing demand for SEF triggers the need for reviewing public funding [ 15 ]. There are public arguments for wider subsidies in the popular media of several countries including the UK and Belgium [ 16 , 17 ].…”

The revision of the French bioethics law and the questions it raises for the future of funding for egg freezing

“…However, women with primary ovarian insufficiency, endometriosis or Turner Syndrome are ineligible for public funding, despite being conditions that many may consider as possessing the features that characterise a 'medical' indication for egg freezing. Conversely, in Australia, all the aforementioned reasons are considered as legitimate medical indications for egg freezing, and thus qualify for public funding (Johnston et al, 2021). The variation between how a 'medical' indication is interpreted within different funding policies suggests there is no general agreement for or nomenclature of what constitutes a genuine medical indication for egg freezing.…”

“…As argued by Goold and Savulescu (2009), the women seeking non-medical egg freezing are analogous to those seeking medical egg freezing. Further, empirical data indicates that there is some public support for funding both medical and non-medical egg freezing (Johnston et al, 2021;Platts et al, 2021), suggesting that for some, the indication for egg freezing is not important to decisions of funding distribution. These challenges to the medical/non-medical distinction warrant further deliberation on the continued use of the distinction in egg freezing policy, including whether this distinction is morally relevant to funding decisions.…”